NCAA WOMEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP: FIRST ROUND - BUFFALO VS TENNESSEE

March 19, 2022

Felisha Legette-Jack

Dyaisha Fair

Georgia Woolley

Buffalo Bulls

Media Conference

Tennessee 80, Buffalo 67.

FELISHA LEGETTE-JACK: To God be the glory who's the head of our lives. I really am so humbled and grateful for the opportunity to coach this team here at this time of my career. I'll tell you, these young people, how cool are they? They just leave it out there. Wasn't it a fun game to watch? It was so wonderful, such a wonderful game to be on ABC.

We weren't going to relent and neither was Tennessee. The fight was tremendous all the way until the last seven to eight minutes of the game.

At the end of the day, their size really wore us down a little bit. But these two by my side here were tremendous, but you can't say enough about a Summer Hemphill who as small as she is at six feet tall, she contested 6'3", 6'4", 6'5", every single possession. And she probably shouldn't have played because her knee was bothering her, but there was nothing I could do to keep that young lady out of the game. For that I've got to thank her.

I've got to thank my bigs. I've got to thank Dyaisha Fair. There's a lot of great talent on that floor. But I'd put Dyaisha Fair against anybody in the country, and I mean that, without a thought. She's a special player.

This rookie over here, three years ... I think we'll be back here soon because these two right here are just an incredible group of people.

For that, I thank Tennessee. I thank the NCAA for seeing fit to allow us to be a part of this opportunity. We are humble. We learned. We grew. We never lose. We either win or we learn. We won today because these young people showed a lot of heart, a lot of fight, and their story was told in a matter of 40 minutes, and it was great to sit there and witness it.

Q. Dyaisha, Rae Burrell was singing your praises, (Tennessee) Coach Kellie Harper, too, just one of the toughest players they've gone against, saying you can get your shot when you want it and all they can do is hope to force you into some kind of tough shot. From where I'm sitting, you look like an SEC guard, you could compete at any conference in the country. Does that give you a little comfort to know that your game was tremendously recognized here?

DYAISHA FAIR: I mean, if I'm being honest, no. But I appreciate everything. I appreciate all the compliments and all the recognition.

Q. For either of you, even though today wasn't the result you wanted, quite a special season with the MAC Championship and where you got to. What has it meant to you to have those accomplishments under your belt this season?

GEORGIA WOOLLEY: It's meant a lot. It's been a tough year, like we've gone through a lot of things as a team. But, we just knew we had to tell our story, and to tell our story we needed to win the MAC Championship. We needed to get here. We didn't get the result we wanted today, but we grew a lot and just so proud and happy to be a part of this team.

Q. For both Georgia and Dyaisha, you led after the first quarter. Georgia, your bucket bounces in to beat the buzzer. How did it feel there as you were standing toe to toe until Tennessee kind of took over in those final minutes?

DYAISHA FAIR: I mean, as I said in the interview before the game, I know this team can compete with any team in the country and we showed that.

Q. Georgia, Tennessee defensively really forced your team to opt to the guards. What did they do defensively to take the inside game out of this team and get your players in foul trouble?

GEORGIA WOOLLEY: I mean, they're very tall. She's 6'6", so it was always going to be a challenge for the bigs today. They gave it everything they had. Yeah, they did really well.

Q. Georgia, how do you sum up your first season with Coach Jack?

GEORGIA WOOLLEY: There's just so much I could say. My first season just was made easy because of Coach Jack. She puts so much trust, so much love, so much passion into me, and it just gave me the confidence to do anything that I thought I could do, anything that I could do, and just so happy to be a part of this team and play for Coach Jack.

Q. You just mentioned Summer Hemphill and how big she played today, going up against Key who is 6'6". Summer played like she was 6'6" today. She played 40 minutes today hard and big in the paint. What does she mean to this program, for this game tonight?

FELISHA LEGETTE-JACK: She bought into the culture from day one, and on a national level, everyone can now witness what our culture is. We fight to the finish.

They out-rebounded us 55-38. I've got to look and see if some of those rebounds could have been ours still. I'll tell you, she's a kid that understands that the respect isn't given, you fight until the finish and eventually it'll be earned.

This was a perfect example of what transpired in this young person's life for the last six years. Been counted out, been disrespected, have been shared that she's not one of the best in our conference. I think that her better days are her latter days. I think she's going to help a pro team very quickly because no one can coach what she brings, that toughness, that fight, that Buffalo blue collar mindset.

The reason why with we had such success in my tenure is because Summer Hemphill was with me for six years. I'm so mad that she doesn't get the respect that she deserves, but I'm so humble that she just keeps taking it on the chin and just keeps saying, 'Coach, whatever is for me is going to be for me.' We're just not going to quit. I love that kid, love that young lady.

Q. Tennessee got the start it wanted, obviously the 6-0 start, crowd behind it. You called that time-out and absolutely flipped the script. What did you convey to your team in that time-out?

FELISHA LEGETTE-JACK: Well, it was 8-0 at one point and I shared with them, I said, 'We are right there. We are right there.' I said, 'The next time-out we're going to be tied or ahead. Anything else we need to say?' No. You don't get emotional with that. You don't bring attention to what they did, you bring attention to what you're supposed to do next.

At the end of that four-minute segment, the score was 8-7 before time-out was called again. We got close but we didn't reach the goal.

Players like that and teams like that and the level like that, they're going to get their runs. I thought that we had one more run in us and unfortunately it didn't work out the way we wanted to.

Those rebounds, we didn't count on them to be the best free-throw shooting (team) in the country. I wish they would have stayed with the statistic of being a poor free-throw shooting team because we needed some kind of luck. But at the end of the day, you've got to have fun with this game and you've got to laugh a little bit and make fun.

When you talk about young people that are really going to be future pros, future nurses, future doctors, you don't talk about the problem, you talk about the solution. I thought they really stood the test of the fans in that first segment and really countered with who they are and who they are as a blue collar team that fights to the finish.

Q. It seemed like Georgia has a really high IQ for how young she is, and it seemed like she was always affecting the play, whether it be tipping passes and stealing, scoring on the fast break, all the threes. Is that something she's shown throughout the whole year or have you helped her kind of grow into that kind of player? And do you feel like there was a lot of jump balls, too, and is that something you really teach your team, to attack the ball no matter what?

FELISHA LEGETTE-JACK: You know, Georgia has a very high IQ. She's a young lady -- I'll tell you, this is a side note, she doesn't play foosball. It's a game that I love and it's a game I play in my home. She taught herself how to play foosball and came to my house. I beat her, but it's a sweat. We're drenched. She doesn't relinquish. Didn't know how to play Spades, and her and her buddy from Australia got together and we play Spades. I don't know if she's cheating or what's happening, but I know that I struggle to beat her in a game that I taught her.

It goes with the game of basketball. It's a game she's been playing for a very long time, and I think she's grown two inches since she's been with us and she definitely has a very high IQ.

The jump ball thing, it's a loose ball. You go face first, you go get it. It's about how bad you want it. It's a heart test.

I think that we're used to going after those balls, and I think Tennessee usually are the ones that usually win those contests because they are just a tough team, too. But I think that they realized that we wanted it just as much as they did.

Q. The Tennessee players talked about how, in the second half, they settled in more to finish around the rim. After the first half they weren't really doing that. They shot 55 percent overall in the second half. How difficult is it to come back against a team that really feels determined to get those buckets around the rim?

FELISHA LEGETTE-JACK: I want to watch the film in that second half and see if we missed a couple travels or if our kids were not fronting the right way or what we did wrong. Because, for them to get those shots as quickly and easily as they did -- I don't care who we play. We've played against some really -- South Carolina in your league, and we deterred that inside force on multiple times. For some reason it seemed like it wasn't a deterrent on our defense. So I really want to watch the film and figure out what that was.

I don't think we'd done anything different in the first half than we did in the second half. In order for me to answer your question, I need to watch a little bit more film.

Q. What is the legacy that this year's team is going to leave with the UB basketball program?

FELISHA LEGETTE-JACK: Just three words: We fight on. That's what I put out there in social media from day one. This team has been so resilient, playing a tournament out in the Bahamas, and first game of the season is against the No. 1 team in the country. Then we played Oklahoma, who's in the tournament right now, and in the top 15 in the country. And playing all those teams out there and learned lessons and going on a three-game skid where everybody jumped off the bus and all we had was each other. They just kept fighting on. They just kept fighting on.

They kept figuring out the sisterhood thing where everybody else was fighting, and it's like, let's fight each other. We went through that and the process of growing up right before my eyes. These young ladies, really I can't say enough about the adversity -- everybody has their adversity. Everybody did this year. It's one of those years. But the stick-to-itiveness that these people had to stay together, to make it a oneness and not about me.

We don't have a go-to player. Dyaisha can score 25 points, but Summer has to get the rebound. And Addy has to be the motivational talker, and we stick together. The three words that summarize our team is that we fought to the finish and we fought on.

Q. There's a sequence towards the end of the game where Tamari Key got an offensive rebound, missed her put-back, got her own rebound, and then made it. It looked like all you could really do was laugh it off. How tough is it to deal with Tamari and Tennessee's height advantage?

FELISHA LEGETTE-JACK: Believe me, I wasn't laughing about that. I wasn't laughing about the fact that -- I thought we had a good position to have a box-out and I'm not certain if that was clear or not. So I just think that there's some incredible players -- I'm terrible with names. She was No. 2. Who's Tamari? She played actually with our player over at the previous institution at Troy. If she gets a rebound, then that's a laughable moment because there's nothing we can do to stop that kid. That's a rebounding juggernaut, and I really have a lot of respect for all of them really.

But that young lady right there, I don't know what she ended up in rebounding, but I thought she literally jumped over one of my kids. I'm like Dyaisha, you've got to just stand taller or something. But what a great team you guys have. What a great thing you can do to represent this amazing program you have here at Tennessee.

Q. As for the future, there is a job open at Syracuse at your alma mater. Are you interested or is it too soon to start thinking about that?

FELISHA LEGETTE-JACK: This is our team right here and we are absolutely focused on Buffalo, and we're going to get through this season with our team here. I told them there would never be a conversation about any other school until we finish the job here and we're still not finished. We haven't celebrated here yet.

I'm here with Buffalo and Buffalo is my job, and I work for Mark Alnutt, and President Tripathi is my president, and that's all we can talk about at this time.

Q. When the brackets got announced last Sunday and Buffalo slid into Tennessee, my first thought was oh, my goodness, what a matchup that's going to be. Kellie was talking about she wasn't comfortable going into this game at all. She was nervous about it. What have you done in your time there to make Buffalo such a respected team where even national people were picking this as a possible upset? How did you accomplish that there?

FELISHA LEGETTE-JACK: Well, I was allowed to be me. I have a great boss who understands that I'm a fiery person and my passion is misconstrued as overreactiveness and too much and some other key words that people use against my name and my ability to want something that belongs to us.

He's allowed me to be me. He's allowed me to be as authentic as I can be, and these young people fed off of that. They understand that defense is our mantra. You just don't want -- nobody can come in our home and go up in our attic and take our furniture. No, we're going to stop you at the door, because that to me is a microcosm of life. I was allowed to be that.

At my other previous jobs, it was very questioning. It was always questioned, wondered what if somebody said that. And to be able to be your whole self, I think everybody can become. Same with the young lady that was my point guard, Dominique Camp. I was told by her coaches she's not a good player, she's not going to be able to be a great player at your institution. Well, every kid has wings. All you've got to do is give them permission to flap them and maybe they'll fly or maybe they fail, but they can become. And I was allowed to be my authentic self at Buffalo. And because of that, first I give God the glory, but I also give Mark Alnutt total credit for allowing me to this crazy, passionate, apologetic self sometimes when I chase officials around the gym. Those things got to stop and I've created that stoppage, but I am so grateful that I work for somebody that allowed me to be me.